


What You Want Is What You Get

by Jelliheart (Jellibeebee)



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Danny's a space nerd, Gen, Meaning Sam's the ghost girl, Reverse Trio AU, Sort-of-not-really-Dan?, and Tucker's a technogoth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 12:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2468867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jellibeebee/pseuds/Jelliheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I wish I was part ghost." </p><p>It started with a wish. Of course, many things start that way, good and bad, and for Danny Fenton, it had most certainly turned out bad. He didn’t mean for it to be bad, though. In fact, it spawned from a well-intentioned desire to help his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Want Is What You Get

**Author's Note:**

> Posted first on Tumblr, here are some images to get you through what people look like. Yes, this is what [that picture](http://jelli-art.tumblr.com/post/87816683668/um-yeah-so-my-baby-came-up-with-this-really-cool) is about. Now you know. For the appearance of the trio in question, [here’s an image.](http://jelli-art.tumblr.com/post/87443308513/i-love-reverse-trio-au-way-too-much-so-have-some) A look at Sam’s ghost form is [here.](http://jelli-art.tumblr.com/post/86146158398/sam-manson-a-k-a-the-ghost-girl-sam-mena) There is probably (maybe?) going to be a part two to this. I’ll link it here when it’s written.
> 
>  **EDIT 9/21/16:** Okay, I fixed the links now whoops!! Forgot they'd break when I changed my blog name ha ha... (Sorry about the old art!! It's been a little while...)

It started with a wish.

Of course, many things start that way, good and bad, and for Danny Fenton, it had most certainly turned out bad. He didn’t mean for it to be bad, though. In fact, it spawned from a well-intentioned desire to help his friends.

Sam fought so hard to protect Amity Park and to understand the ghosts who ravaged it so that she might be able to help them. Before her accident, she had stood up against her parents and their close-minded hatred of ghosts, who they saw as monsters deserving destruction than as the souls of the deceased. Her “ecto-activism” had, if anything, grown stronger after the accident. They were still people too, she insisted with fervor, and they deserved to be understood and helped just as much as anyone living.

Tucker, their techno-goth, was nothing to scoff at either. His inventions, while creepy, had done much to help them with their self-imposed mission. Whether it was to scout out the area, obtain intel, or to fool a ghost into capture long enough for Sam to deal with them, Tucker’s tech was useful and did them much good.

Between the two of them, Sam with her ghost powers and Tucker’s knowledge of technology and the occult, Danny wondered where he fit in sometimes. Him, the astro-nerd, the space kid—what did he have to offer? What good did model rockets and star charts do in the face of the ectobiological? How far could a fumble-less grip on an ecto-container and banter half-said under his breath really take him when it counted?

At the time of the wish’s incident, he felt scared and useless when their latest fight—Sam and Tucker’s latest fight, he should say—had more of him trembling around the corner with an ecto-container, waiting to be back-up, than doing any actual fighting. Sam was the one to handle the ghost; Tucker’s bug was the distraction; Danny just sucked them up at the end and worried over Sam’s bruises.

It wasn’t fair, he thought afterward, that they did so much while he did so little. I’m useless, he thought. I wish I could do more. Then, in a moment of frustration while observing the green stain of Sam’s mouth, he made the wish without thinking it’d come true.

“I wish I was part ghost.”

A chill seeped through his clothes and rolled down his spine.

“If that is what you wish, then let it be so.”

There was a cackle, and then, that had been that.

——

After the new ghost, an angry, bespectacled spirit with a ridiculous magician’s get up, had left, chased off by Sam who had been more concerned by what he had done to Danny than what he might want, Danny tried to change, just to see if it’d worked. It was embarrassing when he and Tucker waited for a flash of light, a glow, something to occur, only to stand in silence.

“Maybe it didn’t work,” Tucker said, peering at his best friend, as if he might see something they’d missed.

“I guess not,” Danny said, and he felt strangely disappointed.

Sam reappeared, touching back down and looking around herself once before shifting back in a collision of light that had her swallowed up much like a flower becoming a bud and then splaying itself back out into the ground to expose her again, now human.

“He got away,” Sam sighed. “I don’t know where he went, but I’m sure he’s going to make a pain of himself later on.” Her gaze turned to Danny. “Are you okay? The creepy green fog and ominous voice didn’t do much in the way of comfort.”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “It didn’t work.”

Tucker shrugged, PDA already back in his hands. “Shame. It would have been pretty cool to see Danny go all half-ghost too.”

“Sure you wouldn’t have felt left out, Tucker?” Sam asked, one hand cocked on her hip as she smirked.

“Nah, being part ghost and all is great for individuality when it’s rare, but when you start getting up to more than two, it starts to lose it’s charm. Three’s a crowd and all that, but for now, who’s up for lunch? I’m starving and the grease-stained walls of the Nasty Burger are calling my name.”

“Remind me not to linger on that thrilling mental image too much.”

Danny laughed at the time, as he went along for the ride, mildly disappointed that he hadn’t gained the means to be of better help to his friends and their cause, but not too heartbroken by it. What would he do with ghost powers anyway if he didn’t know how to use them? It’d taken Sam a month to figure hers out and she was still learning something new everyday, so it slipped from his mind, and he was fine.

Then, the blackouts started up.

——

It had started small, little snippets that he hardly worried about. It was like standing after lying down too long, just a moment of darkness that disappeared with a blink. It left him a bit dazed, but a shake of his head and he was fine. He wasn’t sure when they started increasing, just that one day he’d gone from standing on a street corner, waiting to cross, to halfway down the block, wondering when he’d moved or when the light had changed.

Minutes began to disappear from his memory. A block walked in absence, a trip from the front door at home to school experienced in a moment and utterly alone. Tucker and Sam found him later, asking where he’d been on the walk there. Danny uttered a “Sorry, I was behind today and went another way” without thinking.

He should probably tell someone, Danny decided one day, sitting in his room and staring down at his math homework. The blackouts were getting worse, and he didn’t know when the next one would—

He found himself standing in the mouth of an alleyway, watching dazed as people ran past.

“Danny!” Sam said, looking surprised, as she appeared in front of him above his head. “Are you okay? I was chasing a ghost this way. Did it hurt you?”

Danny’s tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth, so he shook his head no.

“Okay, stay here and find somewhere safe then. I’m going to go find it.” She shot him one look of concern before zooming past down the alleyway and then above the rooftops.

Danny looked with dread at his watch.

6:10.

He’d been in his room over an hour ago.

Danny felt sick.

The trek home was only half-remembered, and his parents seemed unsurprised by his arrival home. Had he told them he’d been leaving? Attempts to dredge up memory of the past hour or so brought up nothing, and he trudged up to his room.

He considered telling someone; he really did, but when he met up with Sam and Tucker the next day, they’d been preoccupied talking about a new ghost.

“I was searching Amity all night for him,” Sam said, lips pursed into a thin line. “I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

“The wish guy?” Danny asked, glancing over at her.

“He actually calls himself Magic Man it turns out, but no,” Sam said. “It was a different one. I didn’t get a good look at him, but he definitely didn’t look like our wishing ghost.”

“So now we have _two_ ghosts loose around Amity?” Tucker said, eyebrows rising high on his forehead. “Man, that sucks.”

Danny grinned. “I guess you would say we have double the trouble then, huh?”

The other two groaned, and Tucker punched Danny’s arm lightly. “ _Dude…_ ”

“Well, in any case, we’ll know to keep an eye out for them,” Sam said, rolling her eyes. “Be on the lookout for the Magic Man and a ghost with flames.”

“Flames?” Danny said.

“Yeah, flames. Or at least I think they were. It was hard to tell,” Sam said. “Hey, you didn’t get a look, did you, Danny? I know you were in the area.”

“What?” Tucker immediately looked up from his PDA. “Are you telling me that I, the goth, am the only one who hasn’t seen our second mystery ghost yet? How is that fair?”

Danny ignored Tucker’s indignant scowl and shrugged. “No, I didn’t. He could have gone invisible and slipped past me though.” The blackout lingered in his mind, but he bit the side of his tongue and said nothing about it.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Sam said. “I’m sure he’ll show up again. I just hope it’s sooner rather than later.”

——

Danny should have been prepared for the next one, but twenty-four hours without a blackout made him relax. One moment, he reached a hand out to leave the bathroom at Nasty Burger to meet back up with his friends; the next, he found himself across the street, watching fire trucks attempt to fight back the unnatural blue flames that consumed half the burger joint.

“Danny, there you are!”

Tucker ran over and shook his shoulder. “Dude, are you okay? We had no idea where you were. The ghost just came out of nowhere and trashed the place! We were worried you were still inside.”

“Where’s Sam?” Danny asked, staring numbly at the destruction.

“She went off to see if she could go find him. Man, that guy was nasty, and it has nothing to do with the place he just trashed.” Tucker looked hard at him. “Dude, seriously, are you okay? What happened?”

“I—I don’t know,” Danny said. “I guess I ran on auto-pilot. I don’t remember.”

Tucker suddenly looked alert. “Danny, did the ghost get to you? Like attack you in the bathroom or anything?”

“No…” Danny said, watching as the fire trucks finally beat back the blue flames. “I never saw him at all.”

——

Danny stared, bleary-eyed, at the clock at the front of the room, pencil tapping on his desk.

I’ve got to tell them, he thought.

The blackouts hadn’t ceased in the slightest and last night had probably been the worst alone. He had gone from shuffling from his desk so he could change for bed at about midnight to standing barefoot in front of the half-charred remains of the Nasty Burger. He had shivered, clutched his arms, and stared terrified at the building for about ten minutes before making the cold walk home in the dark. He’d made it back in one piece, albeit scared out of his wits, but when he’d made it inside—thankfully he’d had his keys but no phone—the clock on the microwave had proclaimed the time to be 4:32 am in bright, glowing numbers.

He had only clutched tightly to his elbows and quietly trudged up the stairs to get a little sleep before Jazz woke him up around seven.

Now, he was tired and realizing that this was a serious problem he might want to share with his friends. They had still been talking about the ghost, the one that had trashed the Nasty Burger, which he hadn’t gotten a chance to see yet, and Danny was starting to worry about possession. They had very recently learned that ghosts could do that, and now, Danny was concerned that the very same was happening to him.

The bell ringing brought welcome relief, and he quickly picked up his bag. He hadn’t bothered to pull anything out, as tired as he was, and he snaked his way past the other students and out of the room. They had lunch now, which was where Danny planned to tell Tucker and Sam about the blackouts and his fears of possession.

“Hey, guys,” Danny said, as he came upon their meeting point: Sam’s locker.

Tucker turned to greet him. “Hey—Whoa, dude. Are you okay? You look terrible.” He lifted both dark eyebrows at the unhappy picture Danny made.

Sam looked over and immediately frowned. “Yeah, Danny. You didn’t stay up late on that Shuttle simulator again, did you?” She placed a hand on her hip and narrowed her eyes.

“No—No,” Danny said. “Look, that’s what I need to talk to you guys about. I’ll explain it at lunch.”

The two glanced at each other in concern, then back at him.

“Okay,” Tucker said, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “Come on then. Today’s meatloaf Friday, you know.”

Sam made a sound of disgust.

——

Despite Tucker’s statement, he did actually bring his own lunch just like they did—after all, it wasn’t like money was sparse for him—and it didn’t take long for the three of them to find a table outside.

“So what’s up, man?” Tucker said, peeling open the wrapper on his meat sub—hold the lettuce and veggies—with eager, black-painted nails.

“Yeah, Danny, what’s wrong?” Sam said, scowling with disapproval at Tucker over her homemade salad before turning a look of concern to Danny.

Danny exhaled and picked at the zipped seal of his sandwich bag. “I don’t know, guys. I just—something really weird has been going on, and I’m starting to worry that I might—”

Sam sneezed suddenly and her eyes went round, as someone screeched from the opposite corner of the lunch area.

Danny whipped his head around with the other two to see the first ghost, Magic Man, hovering over a terrified jock.

“If that is what you wish, then let it be so,” he proclaimed, laughing.

The jock immediately began to bulk up and turn hideously green. He curled into himself and then released a deafening roar that had his lunchmates scrambling from the table as they screamed.

“Danny, Tucker!” Sam said sharply.

“On it,” Tucker said, already pulling out one of his black robo-spiders.

Sam tossed Danny the ecto-container and then slid under the table for cover while she changed. A small explosion of light later, and she zipped away from them, fists outstretched.

Danny watched, helpless, as he left the table and stepped backwards towards the tree behind them. Tucker stood, deep in concentration on the spider, which had left in a whir of propellers, and his PDA, which controlled it. Danny looked up to see Sam working to contain the threat while also trying to return the jock to normal. The Magic Man only cackled, mocking them both.

Danny clutched the ecto-container tightly against his chest, feeling an angry burning rise up in his throat. “I just wish—”

Before he could finish, everything shuddered and went black.

——

With the next blink of his eyes, Danny found himself crumpled on the floor, cheek smushed against cool metal. He blinked once, feeling disoriented and achey, and he shifted his head, struggling to get his bearings through the green glow that partially lit the dim room. A pair of hands gripped his arm and wrapped around his chest, helping to draw him to his knees and sit up. Danny clutched gratefully to them and looked up to identify Tucker.

It took him a moment to realize that Tucker wasn’t looking at him but above him, face grim yet intense.

A glance beside them showed Sam hovering in her ghost form, her hands glowing bright with the yellow of her ectobeams, expression tight and sharp. She, too, was staring at something he couldn’t see, so Danny finally turned his head to see what had caught their interest.

A pair of bright red eyes stared him down beneath a head of swooping white flames that seemed made to resemble hair. A long face and round chin seemed to spark recognition in him, but the pointed ears and teal skin threw him off. Still, the nose, the mouth, the thick eyebrows and lanky body, clothed in a black and white suit and corded with lean muscle he’d like to have, struck him somehow, as if he should know the ghost that hung before the machine he recognized to be sitting in the basement lab of Sam’s home.

The invention was shaped much like a high-tech bubble stick with a film of green, buzzing energy filling the space in its hoop, large enough for a person to fit through. He had no idea what it did, but he had a creeping sense that it had been, or was, important somehow.

The ghost’s mouth curved open to expose a dangerous set of fangs. “Well, would you look at that—I guess we don’t have to share anymore.”

Danny’s stomach sank.


End file.
